Windows 7: BSOD shortly after start up 75% of time

Hi,

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Service Pack 1, AMD Phenom 9650 Quad Core processor 2.30 GHz with 8 GB RAM.

I get the BSOD roughly 75% of the time shortly after I start and log on to my system. Sometimes it happens within seconds of logon, sometimes within a few minutes after I start working (regardless of the program I'm working on). The screen goes black and then the BSOD appears for just an instant, not log enough to discern any info. Sometimes the computer reboots on its own, and sometimes it hangs and I have to hard-reboot. When it happens, it usually happens several times consecutively until I'm able to log on and work normally, uninterrupted.

This is my first post here, so I believe I've included the necessary dump files zipped as to the forum guidelines, but please pardon me if I've made any errors. Your help is greatly appreciated.

From the single crashdump I see here, a solitary bit of code got corrupted when residing in RAM, which then when the corrupted instruction was run, things bugged out. Because it's a solitary bit, I might have to point blame at your CPU or RAM being problematic. Motherboard and PSU are also potential suspects, but without proper hardware tools they cannot be diagnosed outside of swapping them with reliable alternatives, so we'll work on the RAM and CPU right now. Either way, you'll need to start swapping hardware regardless.

Before anything else, reset your Motherboard's BIOS settings to factory defaults, if you're overclocking. This will ensure we aren't dealing with overheating or just an unstable system. You may also wanna clean the system out of any dust, and reconnect RAM, cards and drives (both power and data cables) to ensure we aren't dealing with connection issues. Make sure when you re-seat cards or cables to clean the slots for any possible debris. If you wanna go even further than that, re-seat the CPU and heatsink. Make sure you remove all thermal paste and apply a fresh layer before reattaching the heatsink.

Once that's all done, you can run Memtest. Run overnight. If you get red, check to determine if it's regions of memory that are corrupt or if they're small, solitary 'specks'. If you can't figure that from the display, try taking a snapshot of the screen and sending it to us. If we're dealing with small 'specks' of RAM being corrupt, then we are more likely to deal with CPU. Otherwise, we're dealing with RAM failure. RAM failure can still produce the small region failures, but not as frequent.

The unfortunate thing is that there isn't really anything to test the CPU with reliably without access to stable Windows. I would normally recommend Mersenne Prime Test or OCCT from the UBCD, but there is a bug with later versions that makes CPU tests croak. If you can find some older version of UBCD that'd probably work. Otherwise, we'll just have to start swapping hardware from here on.

Personally, I think it's the CPU, because single bit corruptions are more common with CPU failure than RAM. However, RAM is cheaper to replace, so it's really up to you on what to decide which avenue to take this towards.

Btw, if you find no failures in Memtest, then it can be your CPU, Motherboard, or PSU. Again, without swapping hardware, or finding viable testing solutions on bootable CD environments like the UBCD, we won't be able to push forward with diagnosing this aside from swapping hardware, I'd imagine.